Canterbury pilgrims were members of a gild; he calls it "a solempne and grete fraternite." The Gilds were emphatically brotherhoods — the members are spoken of as "brethren and sustern." They were neighbourly unions, benefit societies, sick clubs, all in one. They assisted the outside poor when able. Sometimes they maintained grammar schools. They were eminently social and public-spirited societies, and their rules breathe the very spirit of brotherly kindness. They often had a chaplain—so has the Lord Mayor of London, but this does not make the city companies "superstitious" foundations. They also sometimes founded a chantry if the parish church was too far off; but their composition was always lay, and not "religious." The Craft Gilds were the first trades-unions. The first Parliament of Edward VI. gave to the Crown the possessions of all "Colleges, Free-Chapels, Chantries, Hospitals, Fraternities, Brotherhoods, and Gilds." And the Crown took all, "except what could creep out as being trading Gilds (which saved the London Gilds)."[1] The Merchant Gilds were too powerful to be meddled with. Bishop Burnet, a great apologist of the Reformation, says that this Act was obtained by a direct fraud. The whole House of Commons was "much set against that part of the Bill for the Guild-Lands. Therefore, those who managed that House for the Court, took these off by an assurance that their Guild-Lands should be restored to them." He also says that Somerset made good this promise, but it was not so, as the records prove. Mr Toulmin Smith, who wrote on English Gilds, left a note, in which he says: "For the abolition of monasteries there was some colour. … But in case of Gilds (much wider) no pretence of inquiry, or of mischief. … A case of pure, wholesale robbery, done by an unscrupulous faction to satisfy their greed, under a cover of law. No more gross case of wanton plunder is to be found in the history of all Europe. No page so black in English history." This indignant note expresses the conviction left on Toulmin Smith's mind, after his laborious researches into a bundle of documents in the Record Office, almost entirely overlooked until the task of overhauling them was committed to him.
